


hands and circles, faces and whiskers

by spycaptain



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, even cults and dead parents, these two have a friendship that transcends all things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 08:54:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4781339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spycaptain/pseuds/spycaptain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s been years, but she’s finally back home. She sits at the bar, doodling little circles on the corners of napkins. Hands and circles, faces and whiskers. Her last memories of the place repeated endlessly, recorded again and again with cheap ink on any surface she can find.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hands and circles, faces and whiskers

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote as a response for an RP meme prompt. It obviously got out of hand. Un-beta'd, so any mistakes are entirely my own. Comments and critiques always welcome. :)

They’re eight, and things haven’t gone to shit just yet.

Days like these, everyone is happy - Iruka for having a friend, Anko for being that friend, and Iruka’s parents are in the kitchen, laughing about whatever it is adults laugh about while the two of them sit at the table and finger paint.

His father has a beer, his mother a glass of wine, they’re kissing and touching and ignoring the cries “Ew, gross!” and “Moooom, stop!” that come from across the room.

“Hey,” Iruka says, dipping his fingers in the paint and drawing a swirl on the poster board. “Are your parents still moving?”

Anko nods, and mimics him, her own swirl turning out more square than circular. She frowns down at the paper.

“This is boring,” she decides. She sticks her hands back in the paint and turns to Iruka, pressing both hands - one bright red, one green - on each cheek, grinning while he sputters and squirms.

“A-anko!” he cries, immediately pushing her away, and without thinking uses his own yellow hands to try and wipe away the paint.

The result is an awful, colored mess that leaves Anko laughing in her chair, and Iruka fuming in his.

“You made me messy!” he accuses. He shoves his own hand back in the paints, turns to Anko, and smears it across her face.

She keeps giggling in her chair, unperturbed and unrepentant, until Iruka joins her as well, the two of them laughing and painting, sometimes the poster board, sometimes each other. Iruka draws an A on her forehead, she draws and I on his, and he draws two little swirls on the tops of her hands, while she draws whiskers on his face.

“I’m going to miss you,” she finally says, when they’ve finished coloring each other in paint. Her tiny hands make fists on her thighs and she tries not to cry.

Iruka gets up from the chair and grabs her hand, pulling her up to her feet.

“Here,” he dips his fingers into the blue paint and begins to write on her shirt. _I - R - U - K - A - !_ and two little dots above the U to make a smile.

“Now you do it.”

She nods and grabs the purple paint - her favorite color, and his least favorite - and writes her name, a giant  _A_  with the  _N-K-O_  beneath it. She pulls back with a smile.

Anko pokes Iruka right in the nose, leaving a little purple spot, and the paint war begins again.

*

She leaves the next morning with only the clothes in her bag. Her parents make her leave her pictures behind, her books, her toys, everything about her old life. She won’t need those things with Orochimaru, they say. He’s taking them in, their part of his family now, and he loves them how they are.

The shirt she keeps, refusing to take it off - it smells like paint, like Iruka, like Mr and Mrs Umino and a nice kitchen and a family that is normal. She wears it until they get to Orochimaru’s and then she tucks it away, hidden where no one can find it and take it away from her.

*

Iruka’s parents die a few months later, two innocent bystanders at the wrong place at the wrong time, caught and killed as victims of gang violence.

The people from the state, with their nice smiles and comforting words that Iruka doesn’t want to hear, take his home from him and sell it. He packs away his pictures of his family, his favorite book (the one Anko signed, her messy, scrawling text over the entire first page), and a stuffed seal his mother bought him at the zoo.

He keeps the shirt, curling up with it on bad nights, the nights when he cries himself to sleep. None of the kids at the orphanage are like his best friend, none of them comfort him while he cries. None of them care.

*

When she’s sixteen, Anko runs away. It takes months and months of planning, of smiling and placating, of doing what Orochimaru wants, what her parents want, until eventually they let her have her room again. They trust her not to break the rules, and then they trust her to be by herself.

That’s when she runs away, in the minute she is left alone. She goes to her room and finds the shirt, tucked between two loose pieces of flooring.

Her heart races as she sneaks out the side gate, but she doesn’t look back.

*

Iruka finally has his own place, all by himself. It’s a small studio above a restaurant. The owner rents it to him for cheap, taking pity on the scrawny thing the Umino boy has become.

He still has his pictures, and his seal, and the shirt, but the paint has faded and fallen off from years of use. He can still see it, though, the giant A in the center.

He folds it neatly and puts it in the closet, then gets dressed for work.

*

It’s been years, but she’s finally back home. She sits at the bar, doodling little circles on the corners of napkins. Hands and circles, faces and whiskers. Her last memories of the place repeated endlessly, recorded again and again with cheap ink on any surface she can find.

She doesn’t know why she’s here, or what she expects to happen. It’s been so long, Iruka might not even remember her anymore.

“Anko?” she hears his voice - recognizes it instantly. It’s deeper, softer, but it’s still Iruka, still the calming tone and the pleasing timbre.

She looks up and there he is: tall and tanned and broad-shouldered and handsome. Her best friend.

“Iruka,” she laughs, pushing herself out of the seat without thought or awareness, and rushes into him, hugging him fiercely. “I’ve missed you.”

“Holy shit, Anko,” he says, his arms wrap around her, squeezing her just as tightly. “I’ve missed you too.” 

*

She doesn’t take out the shirt anymore, because he’s there, with a friendship she falls back in to so easily she sometimes forgets the decade that passed between them. 

His shirt is still in the closet, tucked away safely, but the gaping holes and sharp edges that created him are a little less empty, and a little less harsh.

They catch up, reminiscence, their night spent with quiet confessions of hard lives. When the morning comes and they’re still awake, eating cold Chinese food on his couch, he admits he’s joining the police academy and leaves Thursday morning.

She shrugs. She’s joining the military, and leaves Friday.

Iruka is sentimental, and has learned the hard way not to let the important things go unspoken, so he asks her.

“Hey Anko,” he starts, a nervous blush creeping up from the back of his neck. “Do you want to finger paint?”  

“Yeah,” she answers, not missing a beat. “Let’s go buy our shirts.” 


End file.
